jaq and theora came to visit on Saturday to go to The Riot with us and to introduce us to Settlers of Catan (which I keep wanting to type as Canan, oddly). I made cake and Theora brought cookies, so we were well provisioned for the afternoon :) I cooked the lamb casserole I made a few weeks ago for dinner, once again with beef as the lamb I found was far too expensive. And this time I discovered that it's perfectly possible to set light to a frying pan full of wine. Ahem. It didn't affect the flavour too much, though I think J & I decided that's why it wasn't as nice as it had been the previous time. And we demonstrated the bread machine, too.

Nicely full of casserole & the Black Wych beer that jaq & Theora had brought with them we headed out for the The Riot. We'd not been for ages - possibly since the last time jaq had come along for it. Despite thinking about it, none of us went in fancy dress - but there were quite a few people there who had, ranging from the obvious witch costumes to a traffic cone (we wondered if he was aiming to be someone's beer trophy?) and a banana. I did wear something out of the ordinary for me - I unearthed a strapless top I'd bought about 4 years ago and never worn coz I'd lost my nerve. It actually looked right for the ocassion so I'm glad I remembered it.

In the morning we stumbled out of bed around 10:30 (thankful for the clock change), to nurse hangovers (well, not Theora, but the rest of us mere mortals ;) ). Mine was actually going away by then, having had a thoroughly miserable hour or so at about 8am I'd gone back to sleep for a couple of hours and felt better for it. We headed out to the Duke of York for lunch - I'd assumed (correctly) that I wouldn't fancy cooking a full roast the day after going to a club ;) I think the pub had changed hands since we last went, so the deal for Sunday Lunch wasn't as good as it used to be - but it was still nice food, and nice to get a little fresh air on the walk there and back. We finished off their visit with more cake, more cookies and more Settlers of Catan :)

I enjoyed Settlers of Catan more than I've enjoyed most of the non-traditional board/card-games we've played, it felt like there was more depth to it - some of the card games in particular have felt more like the gimmick/humour is the point, and there's not much underpinning that. We may have to pick up a set ourselves, I think. We also need to get a book/find a website with rules for various of the traditional card games we both half remember from our childhoods - it'd be nice to play some of them again.

Sunday evening was mostly spent vegetating - I finished the first of the new Doctor Who books I'd got from the library ("The Deviant Strain" by Justin Richards) and read the second ("Only Human" by Gareth Roberts). Nice pieces of YA fluff - I find the oh-so-polite language and the blatant innuendo an amusing combination ;)

Maybe you guys can make it to my board games weekend (or part of it), first weekend of December? We've lots of non-traditional games, and there are *lots* that are excellent indeed.

There's also various Settlers (and the like) online, such as Jaq's java one (it's available in various places but he's hosting a copy), and http://games.asobrain.com (Catan with expansions, Carcassonne, couple of others). Not nearly as many as there are good games, sadly. Sniff!